Funny you mention that - I just finished reading the excellent Perfecting Sound Forever - and there's a great analysis of the way vinyl filters and colours sound (in ways digital doesn't). It's actually like listening thru a very subtle pink noise filter. And everyone making CDs now wants their work to sound like a 'record' - thinking vinyl is the most accurate, when technically it isn't....

I don't think there is a perfect or 100% accurate way of recording. Possibly because our ears & sense of sound is culturally attuned - for music fans in Edison's era, the wax recording might've sounded rather life-like and 'accurate'. Us kids of the 70s are used to hearing vinyl as Hi-Fi, and this generation of kids is getting used to lossy MP3s rather quick. All recordings are approximations; and everyone's hearing conditions are arbitrary. So it's a creamy, rich middle ground of imperfections.